Powerful story, amazing content but boring setting

It’s a fascinating topic and I was very excited after reading the intro of this book. In a way it did not disappoint: the book is packed with precious factual info and is very useful to describe many shocking political decisions and horrendous human consequences that are still today mostly hidden or undermined in (my) mainstream History of (Western) Europe. To me it’s like discovering another whole holocaust behind the first one, something that my history books had just mentioned in passing like some secondary event... The knowledge in this book is enlightening and inspiring to me to understand better today’s people and geopolitics of Eastern Europe especially in countries like Poland and Ukraine. Indeed as the book rightly points in its introduction: we can never build a common future together unless we look at and understand our shared history from every point of view. I had never looked at the 1930’s and WW2 from the perspective of Eastern European countries: this book made it possible for me to be less of an idiot on what the people in these countries went through then and consequently how they look at the world now. I hope every world diplomat, EU actor and ideally every politician in Europe learns about all the evidence gathered there. This story of the “bloodlands” is like a massive scale Harvey Weinstein story or the scandal of sexual abuses in the Catholic Church: something everyone “kind of” knows or has vaguely heard about, but that has yet to be publicly acknowledged and taken into account by society, politics and circles of power. This book takes a step toward that. So to me it’s a very powerful story and some amazing research to back it up.

Unfortunately, I am going to have to give up on ever finishing listening to the audible version of this book. I can never listen to more than 30mn of it without falling asleep. I can’t figure whether it’s the (very) monotonous reading, or perhaps the writing/ structure of the book, or perhaps me (possibly it’s not a bedtime reading) but I just can’t get into it. I’m trying to focus on some specific chapters not to miss out too much on the tremendous research this obviously required. It feels to me like some amazing content I can’t reach because I can’t stay focused and awake...very frustrating!

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